Most of us know golf’s historic beginnings.
Founded: Sometime in the 15th century.
First course: St. Andrews.
Original architect: Mother Nature.
First players: The working class.
Cost: Free, or very affordable.
It was a game played as it should be played; and it was structured as it should be structured.
To my mind, it was the most egalitarian sport on the planet.
Even the communal putting green where townsfolk gathered to practice, was a first attempt to “grow the game.”
That phrase is badly misused today, and even the blood-soaked backers of LIV Golf use it as a reason why they founded this alt-tour.
Bull%&#@, say golf purists. It’s sports washing on a grand scale.
History shows the game was hijacked by moneyed men soon after its creation.
In 1744, The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (Muirfield) codified the rules, then imposed a code of conduct which reeked with restriction, racism, elitism, and misogyny. The club’s infamous sign – NO WOMEN OR DOGS ALLOWED – indicated golf had jumped the shark and had built a partition between private and public players.
This is the game imported here in 1895 when the Royal Canadian Golf Association (RCGA) was founded by seven private clubs. The prefix ‘royal’ oozed aloofness, but also intent: it would do the bidding for the private-club minority.
The unwashed were consigned to driving ranges, pitch and putts, Par 3s, 9-holers, munis and 18-hole public facilities. This is where Canada’s per-capita participation rates soared, now tops in the world.
The game’s power, however, was ceded to the bluebloods on the RCGA executive board, which ushered in the dead-ball era in the sport. This relic was renamed Golf Canada in the new millennium and became the game’s National Sports Organization (NSO).
The 15th club in its bag was hope – the hope that it would create a new model which spoke to and for public players and the industry sector serving them.
This turned out to be a chimera. Let me explain.
Golf Canada inherited a game on the ascendency. There was almost 6 million full or part-time players. The industry sector was in hyper-growth mode, and a survey/report benchmarked the sector’s size at $11+ billion – and expanding by the day.
Surely Golf Canada and its Foundation would draft off these numbers, and give the public side its full attention? Step one was eliminating the caste system that hung like a hoarfrost over the game.
A few years back, Golf Canada spent $5 million on a membership drive and sent out emissaries from coast to coast to sign up public players. They met with furrowed brows, and uncomfortable questions, like: What is Golf Canada, and what can it do for me? The sign-up semantics was a bust, memberships flat lined and today’s 300,000, including 1400 clubs – drawn mostly from private clubs – looks like numbers from a decade ago.
The overseers then sent more emissaries to carry its Economic Impact Study to Ottawa and lobby MPs so golfers could claim the game as a legitimate expense.
Bull%&#@, said outraged taxpayers, already ticked because it had to partially fund this NSO. Asking them to now bankroll a tax dodge for what they saw as one per centers, was a textbook case of enormous conceit, or willful blindness.
It was obvious to everyone in golfdom that the game’s overseer was still playing kissy-face with the moneyed elites.
Association names might change, but perceptions don’t.
Meanwhile, the industry stakeholders serving public players were flourishing with crafty in-house programs. The popular junior program run by Sam Young at a small club in Shelburne, Ontario, was a model of efficiency which produced incredible and award-winning results. The kind that the Golf in Schools program didn’t, and its successor, The First Tee, hopes to match or beat.
I could rattle off better-news stories from the public sector, but you get my drift.
Just last year, Golf Canada announced a partnership with Osprey Valley Resorts to build a new home for the game – a golf campus at TPC Toronto, located in Caledon, just north of the big city. It will include new headquarters for Golf Canada, the Golf Hall of Fame, offices for Golf Ontario, the Club Managers Association of Canada, and others. Some estimate it will cost upwards of $70 million.
One industry insider – his voice filled with ineffable contempt – calls it “The Castle in Caledon.” He said the price tag makes him gag, as it should do the same with public players and the industry stakeholders who serve them. Phase 2 includes an indoor performance centre, with hoped-for support from government (aka taxpayers) and private donors through the Golf Canada Foundation’s Drive Campaign. The $13.5 million worth of major gift donations made to the Foundation Trustee program (including a lead gift of $5 million from Paul McLean, CEO of Turf Care, and a former president of Golf Canada) will take it to another level. Gifts keep coming from other well-heeled donors.
So many sports foundations speak to me because of their feel-good stories. When urban legend Hazel McCallion died this year, she got a state funeral partly because she founded and helped fund women’s hockey. Her foundation identifies girls in financial distress and pays for everything they need in order to play. How noble.
It isn’t pouring money into high-performance programs to produce world-class golfers who might someday join pro golf tours and make mega-millions. This isn’t building tony new head offices, or top-of-the-line training centres for the select few.
The Caledon project is supposed to begin this year, the same time as Joe and Jane Q Public battle through the inflationary cycle and scan their golf apps to find a cheaper place to play.
No wonder Golf Canada and its Foundation isn’t registering with public players. For many, they seem distant, but most troubling, irrelevant – RCGA-lite?
Honest Abe Lincoln never played golf but knew all about the power of public sentiment. He once said: “With it, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed”.
How does Golf Canada succeed when 95 per cent of its players are being ignored because they sit on the wrong side of the partition?
Our industry insider has calmed down a bit, but notes Golf Canada simply can’t run away from the numbers. He has more sage advice: “Talk to us. Just show up to things. Put someone on the road to talk to public players and the owners who serve them. Then ask us: What can we do for you?”
I’m looking for a sport that speaks for one, and for all. A sport that bridges the divide between two solitudes and serves both with equal vigour. Canadian golf’s huge public player participation and industry expansion proves it’s no longer a niche sport.
But Golf Canada and its Foundation’s narrow focus is too niche-like, in both theory and practice.
In my humble opinion, this most egalitarian of games, which emerged not so far away from where my ancestors resided, deserves a whole lot better.
